Petz 4.2 (with PetzA) works on Ubuntu Gnome! It is soundless (bar the kissy noise as petz come out of the carry case) and has some strange graphics errors, but fundamentally works. In case anyone else ever wonders (and for myself when I forget in the future)…

Install Wine (otherwise you can’t open .exe files in Linux)
Install Petz 4 (I told it to install into a new folder in C to be safe*)
Install PetzA
Run Petz (It’ll be under Applications -> Wine -> Programs or similar – you can make a shortcut on the desktop for ease)
Go to PetzA settings and change Game Speed to 25 or whatever works (the windows default of 50 is too slow, lower numbers are faster)
Don’t play with the fireplace

*nb it doesn’t actually install it into C:\whatever\. It installs it into the Linux equivalent of user Lyn and fools the program into thinking it’s in C:\whatever\. The programs actual location is home\lyn\.wine\drive_c\whatever\ – to see .wine folder when in home press CTRL-H to unhide hidden folders. This is relatively important when it comes to finding petzpics lol.

Basically the petz work and move as expected bar a few hiccups, clothes work and the toys I tried seemed to work, even the ones that use movies (plane, flying discs, hoop etc.). The hiccups are that the carry case is an issue for the program – if the pet crosses over it or behind it, the framerate slows down. As soon as the pet is no longer overlapping the carry case the pet moves at normal speed again. Likewise on entering and exiting the case it slows down. The other movie thing that causes problems is the fireplace – when lit the framerate drops and in my case it crashed and wiped the registry. Not an issue as the pet was unharmed, but all items in the carry case disappeared.

The graphic quality of non-ballz/lines creations like the fish bowl is slightly speckled (looks almost like GIF problems, but that’s how it looks in game too). Games that rely on DirectX (as petz does) apparently are known to have problems on Linux, but tbh XP had similar problems before PetzA/Petz 4.2 so it’s not unheard of. I’d expect perhaps some furfile problems but the Tabby looks all right.

So on the whole good enough but not as good as Windows. NOTE this is now out of date as newer versions of Ubuntu are out, however I’ve not tested them.

Linux – Linux Mint 17

Updating as Linux Mint + Petz was MUCH more successful than Ubuntu. Seriously – it installed faster than on Windows and seems to be fully functional. I bred some petz, got pose photos, dressed them up, visited Arabia, everything.

Installation is pretty much as for Ubuntu – install Wine and if Wine tells you you need anything, install that too. I installed mscorefonts (Windows fonts) and openjdk-7-hre (Java) as well as another windows program wanted it – petz may well not need them.
Right click on Setup.exe in the CD (or the downloaded demo of Petz 4) and select Open With… Wine Windows Program Loader. Follow installation instructions. I installed Direct X as requested but didn’t bother with ViaVoice as I don’t use it. I also ignored the instruction to reboot.
Repeat for PetzA
Open petz, change the speed in petzA to suit you (in Ubuntu I had to speed it up to 25, in Linux Mint I had to slow it down to 65)

The only issue I’ve noticed so far is that Desktop mode gets upset if you try to have petz in the background. It doesn’t mind being in the background when windowed, but Desktop can freeze, and you have to right click the taskbar to minimise all the windows to get control again. So don’t use Desktop I haven’t tested new furfiles but the in game ones function fine.